The Ghost Of Aincrad and the Spirit Swordsman
by PlasmaSwordsman
Summary: Note: I do not own Sword Art online. This is a custom OC's story that I created. I will use plot holes from the story in order to give my characters some interaction with characters from the main storyline. I will also take advantage information that is not always given to us, or information that was not completely explained. Anyways, it will be about a week in between each chapter
1. Chapter 1

The plane ride took forever. 8 hours on a plane; I'd consider this worth it. I looked up at the buildings around me, lost in the memory from the last time that I was here. I shook it off, not wanting to remember what I had left behind. I was here for one purpose: the VRMMO Sword Art Online. Only something like that could draw me back to the place of my birth. And the place of my curse…

"Taxi!"

**ΔΔΔΔΔ**

_30 mins later._

"Hi there, I'm here to check into my room. I made my reservation three months ago under the name Sigalo," I said to the hotel concierge.

"I see the reservation; may I see some I.D?" I handed it over. "Excuse me sir, I hate to pry but are you the real…"

"Please, don't tell anyone that I am here," I said forestalling the question. "I'm only here for one thing."

"What would that be sir?" I could tell that my statement had piqued her interests. I felt that she would keep my secrets.

"I'm a gamer; so when I heard that Kayaba had developed the first full dive MMORPG, I knew I needed to get it fast."

Her eyes gleamed. "So, you're a gamer that will do anything for a new game?" She sighed; "I wish I had the money to afford the system with the game."

"Then how about a deal?"

"What sort of deal?"

"I have more than enough money and time to get you a NerveGear if you want. If you keep my real identity a secret from most of your coworkers, I can get it for you. Think of it as a favor for a favor."

I immediately wished I hadn't worded it like that. She reached across the front desk and grabbed the front of my shirt with her left hand, ready to punch me with her right.

"WAIT, PLEASE! I did not mean it like that!" The anger was still there, along with a glimmer of amusement that I didn't fully understand.

"Well, maybe next time you should choose your wording carefully!" she said, her fist still ready to punch me. She loosened her grip, and carefully dusted off my jacket. "Against my better judgement however, I will accept your offer and take a copy of SAO. Where can I pick it up from you?"

"Would you be working here the day after? The game comes out in two days, so I'll be camping out tomorrow and coming back to play it here at the hotel the day after. Thats the only reason I decided to rent a hotel room for a couple of days so I could play it for a little while before going home. If you meet me here, I can give you the system. Heck, I could rent you a room if you would like. It would be the least I could do for you keeping my secret. The reason I picked this hotel was because they had Lan-cables next to the beds."

"That would be quite nice. I suppose I could repay you by keeping your secret and joining you in the the game," she replied. "I heard from some buddies of mine that the game was going to be insanely hard. Two of them were Beta Testers."

"Wow, are they hardcore gamers?" I replied, astonished.

"Yep, they are normally some of the toughest players to face off with in game. I used to run with them more, but as they kept getting better and better while I fell behind, I figured that I should just let them go without a lower leveled player like me slowing them down."

I shrugged, "You know, you didn't have to quit playing altogether though, why not play by yourself."

"I just didn't find it as fun, thats all."

"Very well. By the way, what's your name? If I'm going to give you both a NerveGear and SAO, you might as well give me your name so that I know who's helping."

"Oh right, my name is Shisuda. If you are going to rent me a room, you might as well do it while you are here. By tomorrow when you come down, all the rooms might be booked."

I nodded. "Can you hook me up with that? I feel like you know what to do…."

**ΔΔΔΔΔ**

_two days later._

She had told me that it was room 112. I was sincerely hoping that I hadn't misheard, because I was tired of carrying the equipment. I went up to the door and headbutted it, since my arms were full with her NerveGear equipment. In order to keep the fact that I was back in Japan a secret, I felt that this was the least I could do. My parents did not know my whereabouts; neither did any of my old friends. I had achieved what I had so long desired: to disappear. Now, I had finally come back to the town of the misunderstanding, and one of the first people I talk to recognizes me.

While I was musing over this, I heard her coming up to the door of the room. I smiled, knowing that she would be looking through the peephole. The door opened, revealing Shisuda smiling at me.

"Well, you kept your promise. That's a relief; I was worried that I might have to call up everyone I knew and tell them that you were in town," she said jokingly.

I walked into the room and set the NerveGear down onto the bed. "Well, Miss. Is there anything else that I can help you with?"

"Can you tell what I am supposed to do? I have no clue how to I am supposed to work it. I want be on the server right when it starts."

"Sure. The main thing to remember is that you can't move your body once you activate the NerveGear. To start, you might as well put it on. It'll perform a scan to process your brains output and make sure that it can replicate the different sensations. After it does that, it will ask you to pat down your body with both hands. Thats the calibration, it tries to replicate the feeling of motion from your own body. Thats really all you need to know."

"Ok thanks! You've really helped me out. When's the server for the game open up?"

Looking at my watch, I saw that it read 12:35. "In 25 minutes. I'd suggest starting the NerveGear up soon, cause the server starts at 1:00."

"Right, I'd better start getting ready. I'll see you in the game."

I backed out of the room, waving to her. I was really pumped up for the game, and I could feel the same energy coming off of her. I hurried down to my room.

**ΔΔΔΔΔ**

_24 mins later._

One minute left, just one more minute of waiting. Then, the ping of my watch telling me that it was 1:00. I closed my eyes.

"_**LINK START"**_

Lights started to fly towards me. Suddenly, the hexagonal sensors flew past my face, indicating that everything was normal. This was normal. The text box, indicating that I needed to log in. The character creation screen.

"Hmmmm, what do I want to look like?" musing to myself. I decided to go with my standard character design. Ice white spiky hair hair, electric blue eyes, medium build. "That'll do it." Character name: Plasma, standard character name. Enter it. Suddenly, everything disappeared around me. I closed my eyes, readying myself for the impact. The little jolt of my feet hitting the ground. I slowly opened up my eyes, blinking into the harsh sunlight. I caught my breath.

"It all looks so… REAL," I breathed in awe. "Everything seems so much like something you could see in the real world." I walked forwards slowly, my first steps in a new world. Suddenly a voice I had heard not 30 minutes before.

"Well, your character design is very spiffy. How long did it take for you to think about that design?" she said, teasing me.

"Not to long, I use similar character designs for most of my games. What's your name going to be in this world?"

"I decided to use my standard character name: Lyra. It kind of fits how my avatar looks as well," she stated.

I glanced at her character. She seemed much less serious looking in this world, and I did not find it as stunning. I figured it was to lower a person's expectations of her in a fight. Her hair was brown, going all the way down past her shoulders. Her appearance was much more petite and feminine than that of her true self. She wore a longer skirt than the rest of the girls in the square, almost making it a gown. Her eyes were the first thing one would notice though. Even though the color had changed to a more sea blue, they were still intense enough to draw one's attention.

"Well," I said after a time, "Do you want to head out of town and get some XP going? I'm sure that some players are already out there farming up."

"Sure but," she hesitated, "can we go get something else for me to wear? This dress doesn't offer very good movement speed."

"Absolutely, I understand," I said, looking down at my cloths. "I might as well get some better combat gear too."

**ΔΔΔΔΔ**

Twenty minute later the two of us were trying to batter a boar down for our first monster kill. After five minutes of exertion, we managed to defeat the boar, giving us both a little bit of experience and a few items.

"There has to be a better way of doing this," Lyra breathed. "We spent five minutes on killing one of what's supposed to be one of the easiest things to kill. Do you remember anything from the guidebook?"

"Now that you mention it, yeah," I replied. "There was something in the guidebook about something called sword skills. It said that you have to equip them from the menu. Lets give that a shot."

_Five mins later:_

"This isn't going any faster," she complained. "We have to be doing something wrong; that's why we can't kill these stupid things."

I agreed with her, looking around at all the boars nearby. They weren't hostile unless attack, but that didn't make things any easier. Suddenly, I heard a yell to my left and turned. Another two players had arrived to the fields; it seemed like one was teaching the other about something. I saw the one with red hair stand up and get into a ready stance, his sword starting to get a dull orange glow. Suddenly, on the boars next charge, he attacked, killing the boar instantly.

"OHHHHH! So that's how you use those," I said, chuckling to myself. It was so simple, but we just hadn't seemed to think of it.

"What"

"The guy over there just used a sword skill. I know how he did it now too"

"Really?!"

"Yeah. You need to have your strike premeditated, then use it on your target. Basically, you have to use it earlier than your attack."

"Oh! So should we try it out on some boars? We might be able to get to level one in a hour."

"Great idea. Lets go until around 5:15? I might want to go get some food before playing more and then getting some shut-eye before my flight tomorrow. So lets go."

We'd had a very successful hunting trip; killing twenty boars in just three hours. I was keeping watching my time, when I noticed that it was already 5:15.

"Whoa, hold up. Its already time for me to go. I'm starting to get hungry you know."

"Oh come on. We're both only like 20 Exp away from leveling up. Just stay for a little while longer." Suddenly, she was running down a hill, chasing after a boar that we had just injured.

"Lyra wait!" I called, chasing her down. "I really can't stay. I need to go some food that way I can sleep easily tonight!"

"Okay then…." she replied, shuffling her feet. "Do you want to go get something together? I'd be willing to pay; it's the least I could do."

"Thats a very pleasant offer, but I thought that you wanted to do some more leveling? You don't have to offer just to be nice. If you want to continue leveling without me, you don't have to wait."

"No, I think I should come with you. That way people don't get any ideas about your identity. So we should both log out right now?"

Her point did make sense. I still wanted to remain inconspicuous, not giving away the idea that I might be back in Japan. "Ok then. If you want to, we can both log out from here. You can find the logout button in the main menu." We both went to our main menu buttons. I was looking up at her at the time, and when I looked down, I felt the blood run from my face.

There was no logout button.

"What the… where's the logout button." I looked up at the time, suddenly, the clock changed to 5:30 and the bells that hung in the town of beginnings began to toll.

"Plasma, what's going on…" and suddenly she was gone, with a blue light gyrating around her.


	2. The Story

The blue teleport flames that had just surrounded Lyra suddenly engulfed me as well. After they cleared, I found myself standing in the middle of the Town of Beginnings. Off to my right, no more than five feet was Lyra, looking around in confusion. She glanced in my direction, raising her brow in a question. I shrugged, unsure of what was happening myself. Suddenly, someone shouted in alarm, pointing towards a flashing hexagon saying warning. Suddenly, the the one tile multiplied, spreading out throughout the town square, during everything a deathly color of red. Suddenly, a viscous liquid very similar to blood started to leak from in between the the panels. It started to come down like sheets, pooling in mid air. A body like shape began to form from the pool, and suddenly before all of us stood the G.M.

"Probably just the first day announcements," I thought to myself, "but why did he force the all teleport. Not everyone has to be present for the speech."

"Attention player's," he called, cutting off my thoughts. "Welcome to my world. My name is Akihiko Kayaba"

My world…. what can Kayaba mean by that? I could understand him calling the world Aincrad, but why did he call it his world?

"I'm sure you have noticed that the logout button is missing from the main menu. This is not a bug. It is in fact a key element of Sword Art Online. You cannot log out of Sword Art Online on your free will; and no one from the outside can remove the NerveGear."

What does he mean…. its not like if the NerveGear is removed that I can be killed from it, unless he takes advantage of the energy used to intercept our neural commands.

"Should this be attempted, the transmitter inside the NerveGear will emit powerful microwaves and destroy your brain," Kayaba continued. "Unfortunately, several players friends and family have removed the NerveGear. As the result, 213 players have exited permanently from both Aincrad and the real world. News organizations from around the world are reporting on the situation, including the deaths. But remember this; there is no longer a way to revive a player in game. The instant your HP drops below zero, your avatars will be deleted and simultaneously the NerveGear will destroy your brain."

My mind went blank. If me or any of the players in the game died here, we would die in real life.

"The only way to logout is to beat the game. Right now, we are standing on the lowest floor of Aincrad. Find and beat the boss, you will be allowed to advance to the next floor. Defeat the boss on floor 100, and you will be allowed to logout."

One hundred floors…? This was going to be insane; it had taken me and Lyra forever just to twenty boars. Making it to floor 100 was going to be impossible, I don't think that any of the beta players could have made it that far.

"Finally, I have placed a present for each of you into your item storage. Please have a look."

I opened up my storage, still in a daze at the news. "A mirror? What am I supposed to do with a mirror," I growled, pulling it out. Suddenly, the blue flames were swirling around me, and I could feel something on my avatar changing, looking through the light, I could see that everyone around me was becoming enveloped in the flames as well. When the flames stopped, I ran over to Lyra. "Are you alright, what happened to you?" I asked.

"I'm fine, but wait, you look like yourself," she said, turning to me. Looking at her, I could tell that the same was true for her. "What on earth is happening."

"Remember how I told you that the system performs a scan, well it must have used the data it gathered to completely replicate our face. It probably got our height and weight from the calibration."

"Wait, I look like myself in real life?!"

"Yep."

"Why, whats the point of all this! Why would Kayaba go through all this trouble just to trap us inside of the game," she cried, frustrated.

"I'm certain that he'll tell us. He wouldn't want to leave us hanging by a thread."

Kayaba's voice drew everyone's attention to him. "You are now probably wondering 'why; what's the point; why would Akihiko Kayaba, creator of Sword Art Online and NerveGear do this?'. My goal has been achieved, to create a world and have the ability to meddle in it. This marks the end of the tutorial for Sword Art Online. Players, I wish you the best of luck."

Suddenly, the body from which Kayaba's voice sounded seem to dissolve into smoke flowing up into the seemingly impenetrable barrier over the Town of Beginnings. The only sound one could hear at that point was ones own beating heart. My mind was in shock. I was trapped…. not only in this game, but in Japan. Unless they could hack through the firewall of the game, I would be stuck in here for so long, they could find out that I was here. Even worse, it was my fault that Lyra was stuck here. I was responsible for her being trapped in here.

Suddenly the sound of a shattering mirror broke everyone from their stupor. The scene became a rampage, everyone shouting or trying to calm the others down. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of red hair and suddenly realized that it was the young man from earlier today. He was being led by an even younger man with black hair and a serious expression. I had a revelation; the man with black hair was a beta tester. He had taught the other man the skills earlier today; he had been there but just not visible.

I ran to Lyra. She was just standing there, still in shock. I grabbed her hand and she turned to me. "Come on," I said, "we can't waste time on something we cannot fix. If he's right, we need to get to work on leveling up."

Her eyes were full of tears. "But… what can we do? If we die to anything, we're not going to be able to respawn." She nearly burst out into tears after that sentence. "There's nothing we can do."

"No, there is something we can do," I said. "We can make ourselves strong. I just saw a beta tester leave with another person. We can follow them and see where they go. If they leave to the next town, thats fine. I was watching at what times the boars spawned and I think I figured it out."

She let me start to drag her off, preparing herself mentally. As I finished my sentence, she looked at me curiously. "What did you figure out."

"The spawn rates for some of the monsters. We were out there for almost four hours, so I was making sort of a table in my mind about their spawn times." Suddenly, we rounded a corner and almost ran into another player.

"Oh sorry, I didn't mean to run into…" I started. Then I glanced over him and realized that he was the person who I was looking for. "Actually, I did want to find you. We noticed that you and another person were heading out into the field, and were wondering if we could come with you."

"I wish I could help, but my friend just left. He's heading out to one of the outer villages in order to level up faster before the area around here is clear. I'm heading back into the square to find a few friends of mine from the outside."

"Ok thanks for letting us know," I replied, my thoughts racing for a plan. "Could you show us on the map which village he is heading to?"

"Uh, okkk?" he said, slightly puzzled. He pulled up his map and showed me what town his friend mentioned. "Are you planning to try and get out there just the two of you? I wouldn't recommend it."

"We can do it. Her and I," I said, motioning to Lyra, "are almost level 2. We should reach it before we hit the next town. Plus," I continued, "I think I figured out the spawn rates for the first floor fields." We should be able to get there on our own."

"Alright," he said, "but be careful out there, man. It's no longer just a game."

I nodded to him, indicating my understanding. "That I will do."

Me and Lyra nodded our thanks, turning towards the outer walls of the city.

**ΔΔΔΔΔ**

The town seemed dead as Lyra and I ran through. The AI merchants were still open, but there were no players standing around conversing. It seemed like one of the ghost towns I visited during my time in America, empty of everything except for the souvenir stands. Lyra was running right next to me, bringing her arm up to wipe tears away every few seconds. After we rounded the next corner, the gate to the Town of Beginnings loomed ahead. As we approached, Lyra and I started to slow down, looking up the gate. Lyra came to a full stop beneath the gate, moving over to the side of the gate to sit down. I turned and started to walk over to her.

"Lyra, we need to keep moving. We have to get out there within the next few minutes otherwise the monsters will start to spawn," I said, trying to pull her to her feet.

"Can we just call each other by our real names Sigalo? This game has basically became reality and I don't want to just act like you're some person I haven't met before," she asked, taking a few breaths.

"Okay Shisuda, but what's wrong?"

"What do you think is wrong, I'm afraid. I don't want to die in this game."

"Hey," I said, kneeling down in front of her. "We're all afraid now. This is a game. Everyone in here knows how easy it is to die at early levels in a game. We can't give up though, we have to try our hardest here to survive."

She still seemed troubled, easy was easy to tell in her eyes. Her doubt at our survival mixed with the fear of being trapped in the game was becoming mixed, making a potent mixture that led to her hesitation. There wasn't much I could do in this situation, my experience with women was limited.

"Shisuda, I'm sorry I got you stuck in here." Her head jerked up in surprise. "If I hadn't tried to help you, I wouldn't have bought an extra NerveGear to give to you. You wouldn't have gotten stuck in this. It's all my fault, and for that I am extremely sorry."

Her tears were still in her eyes, except now they did not seem to be tears of fear. She wiped them away with the back of her had, using the back of her hand. "I do not deserve that apology, I was the reason that you bought it for me," she said. Suddenly, a fire lit in her eyes. "I'll try my hardest to survive in this world. With you and me fighting together, there is nothing we can accomplish.

I gave her a smile, glad that she believed in both herself and me. I stood, dusting off my pant legs, and reached down with my hand. She accepted my help and I hauled her to her feet. "Well then partner, should we get started?" I said, still smirking. She nodded, and in step, we ran out of the gate into the open world of Sword Art Online, determined to survive together.

_**Sorry about the time between these two chapters, I had a lot of other stuff going on at the same time. I'm going to try and get parts out evenly from now on, but I can't make any promises. Also, if anyone who is reading this is wondering where the action is, I have the first detailed fight next chapter. Please leave ideas/criticism. I have an idea for later on but I need some things to fill in the chapters.**_


End file.
